Here’s an old jazz joke. Three recently deceased gentlemen appear at the Pearly Gates.
St. Peter: Welcome, sirs. Please, I’d like to find out something about each of you.
Person #1: Well, I was a very successful real estate agent, and my annual income was about one-and-a-half million dollars a year.
Person #2: I was an extremely successful lawyer and my average income was about two million a year.
Person #3: My annual income was about $30,000 a year.
St. Peter: Oh, what do you play?
The joke illustrates the fact that the choice of professional jazz musician as your career rarely puts you on the road to affluence. It can be a tough life, and we at PAJA strive to pay reasonable compensation to any musicians we hire.
So, for any concert we put together, we must consider musician fees, venue rental charges, the cost of sound engineers and piano tuners, the expenses involved in printing mailers and programs, escalating postage costs, and so on. It all adds up and some concerts leave us with little or nothing with which to support organizations that are directly involved with jazz
education, PAJA’s primary mission.
You can help. Your donation here will help us keep on the right track, presenting live jazz here on the Peninsula, and providing needed support for scholarships and jazz education.
You can really help. Think about sponsoring a concert. A donation of $1500 will make you the prime sponsor of a concert of your choosing; your name will be featured in concert promotion and in the program, and you’ll get four free tickets and prime seating. Contact Event Chair,
Harvey Mittler (harvey.mittler@gmail.com) or Treasurer Ed Fox (chezfox@mindspring.com)
for information.